Community Server Quickly: A Concise and Practical Guide to Installation, Administration, and Customization (Paperback)

• Get Community Server Express Edition set up and running fast
• Learn to manage blogs, users, forums, and file and photo galleries
• How to customize, market, and monetize your site

In Detail

Community Server is Telligent System's award-winning solution for quickly and easily enabling online communities. It includes a suite of integrated applications, such as blogs, discussion forums, photo sharing, file sharing, email lists, newsgroups, and more, which together can help you create your community presence. Community Server is the trusted solution for many organizations ranging from Microsoft and Dell to Conde Nast and Match.com, and powers massive communities like the Microsoft ASP.NET forums ( asp.net/forums) and the XBOX forums ( forums.xbox.com). You can learn more about Community Server, and see it in action, at communityserver.org.

Written in a clear and concise manner, this book will guide you through the installation, administration, customization, and deployment of a Community Server solution. With the help of this book you will be able to start using your Community Server site within minutes of its installation. The book kicks off with a brief overview of Community Server, its various editions and licensing options, and installation procedures and then delves deep into the creation and management of blogs, forums, photo galleries, file galleries, and more.

The book also explores the different ways you can customize your Community Server site along with coverage of various add-ons and modules. You will also learn how to manage your Community Server license and other related settings. Towards the end, the book provides an overview of the various steps required to deploy Community Server to a hosting server.

What you will learn from this book?

• An overview of Community Server, and the various editions and licensing options
• Installing Community Server
• Creating and managing blogs and forums
• Creating and managing photo and file galleries
• Using the Reader and Roller functionality to collect and display RSS feeds
• Managing users and roles, and working with user profiles
• Monetizing your Community Server site by adding paid advertisements
• Customizing Community server, applying themes, and using add-ons
• Configuring RSS, Date, Time, and Email settings
• Understanding Community Server Reports
• Deploying Community Server

Approach

With this book in hand, you will be able to set up and manage a Community Server solution. You will learn how to create blogs, forums, photo galleries, and file galleries, and use tools such as the built-in RSS reader and RSS roller in a step-by-step manner. This book will provide your with a clear and concise overview of Community Server and will impart the knowledge necessary to enable you to run and manage a Community Server solution.

Who this book is written for?

This book is aimed at the Community Server administrator with a base level of technical competence and confidence, but no prior sysadmin or developer experience or knowledge. No knowledge of ASP.NET programming is required for using this book. What is essential is your own passion for your target community and your desire to provide the best platform possible to that audience.

Anand Narayanaswamy works as an independent consultant and runs NetAns Technologies (netans.com/), which provides web hosting services and is based in Trivandrum, Kerala State, India. He is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Visual C# (mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=a7e62d9a-f4bd-4e18-b673-227e23799581). He works as the full time technical editor lead for ASPAlliance.com (aspalliance.com/author.aspx?uId=38403) and is also a member of ASPAlliance.com Advisory Board. He regularly contributes articles, and book and product reviews to ASPAlliance.com, C-Sharpcorner.com, Developer.com, Codeguru.com, Microsoft Academic Alliance, asp.netPRO print magazine, and asp.netNOW online magazine. Anand has worked as a technical editor for several popular publishers such as Sams, Addison-Wesley Professional, Wrox, and Manning. His technical editing skills helped the authors of Sams Teach Yourself the C# Language in 21 Days, Core C# and .NET, Professional ADO.NET 2, and ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in Action to fine tune the content. He has also contributed articles for Microsoft Knowledge Base and delivered podcast shows for Aspnetpodcast.com. He is a moderator for Windows MarketPlace Newsgroups.

Anand also runs LearnXpress.com (learnxpress.com/), Dotnetalbum.com (dotnetalbum.com/), CsharpFAQ.com (csharpfaq.com/), Computerbookreviews.org (computerbookreviews.org/), and DigitalGadget.Info (digitalgadget.info/). LearnXpress.com is a featured site at MSDN's Visual C# .NET communities section. He also runs a website for the purpose of this book at communityserverbook.com/

Anand has won several prizes at Community-Credit.com and has been featured as "All Time" contributor at the site. He is one of the founders of Trivandrum Microsoft Usergroup. He regularly blogs under the banner "I type what I feel" at msmvps.com/blogs/anandn/Default.aspx and maintains a personal website at visualanand.net/